The Germantown boys basketball team cracked USA Today's national rankings this week, and then showed it belonged with an 84-51 victory at Wisconsin Lutheran on Tuesday night.

The Warhawks made their debut in the rankings at No. 25, but coach Steve Showalter is up to the task of keeping his team grounded.

"Everybody around, from parents to students to teachers in Germantown, is telling these boys how good they are," Showalter said. "My job is to tell them how they're not good enough and they've got to get better. I feel I'm the only one who can do that.

"It's hard keeping teenage kids focused. But I'm never happy with the way we do things anyway, so I'm a good guy for the job."

It's worked on at least one Germantown player, Lamonte Bearden. The junior finished with 27 points against Lutheran but is not letting the rankings get to his head.

"We hear other people around school talk about it, but we want to be No. 1," he said.

Germantown (19-0) is No. 1 - in the Division 1 state rankings by the Associated Press - and what makes its 52nd straight regular-season victory even more impressive is Lutheran (14-4) is ranked No. 3 in Division 2 and had won its previous nine games.

"We were saying before that was probably the best team we've ever played against," Lutheran coach Ryan Walz said. "Assistant coach Josh (Metzger) has been here 11 years and I've been here for 10 years and we can't remember playing a better team than that.

"We played them three times in the summer league and I could see them starting to come together and thought they could be even better this year."

But he did not score in the team's 17-0 run in the middle of the game, which is another reason to believe the Warhawks are among the best in the country.

"Luke is our emphasis on offense," Showalter said. "He's our No. 1 emphasis, as everybody can figure out. So when we can score 17 points in a row without him, that's an added bonus. We don't plan it that way, but we have other guys on the team that can play as well."

Germantown led from start to finish and was already up, 30-23, when it started its run.

The team scored the final seven points of the second quarter, including a three-pointer by Jacob Showalter with 4 seconds left for a 37-23 lead.

Germantown opened the second half by scoring 10 points in a row, including six in the first 57 seconds. That stretch was capped when Fischer passed the ball to Brian Bearden for a layup and 47-23 lead with 5:49 remaining.

The Warhawks made eight of their 11 shots in the quarter. Lutheran missed its first five.

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